This hoary box, the"Wayback Machine" Web archive, contains
all of my youthful scribely indiscretions -- and yours. Back in the day when a player was a player, I used to write for a Web site called The Village Broadsheet. Our mission was to offer news both of interest to and concerned with the then-booming East Village "anti-folk movement." (You may have heard of The Bowmans, Jeffrey Lewis, Nicole Atkins, or Jaymay -- all Village Broadsheet favorites and drinking buddies. Though I can't remember if Lewis drank or not.) The site went down not long after my writing partner Matt and I moved to LA. There were plans to expand coverage to the West Coast, but they fizzled and died.
The Web site offered me a few unique opportunities, including the chance to get very drunk with Keane, interview Jon Brion at the height of the Fiona Apple Extraordinary Machine debacle, and chat with Of Montreal's Kevin Barnes before he went all Faux-Bowie (Fowie?). More importantly, it gave me a unique viewers-rich venue to spout off about anything in particular -- very important for a depressed, often drunk, and hopelessly egotistical 23 year old.
Thanks to Sun Microsystems' Wayback Machine, I was able to be mortified by such hits as:
--A long, long essay on Brian Wilson's Smile! Ironically, this was supposed to be a three-part review -- but I never finished it. (Rimshot.) I enjoyed re-reading this piece, even though it's honestly pretty bad.
--An attack on 50 Cent in which I accuse him of being a 21st Century minstrel! This one garnered some death threats on a 50 Cent message board. Not so proud of this, as the politics are wrongheaded and liberal, utterly lacking in historical understanding. I won't link to it, but I do like the line, "In other words, the CIA put crack in the ghettos, and the record labels put 50 Cent in a Chevy Escalade. Man, they’re smart." --A piece on Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine that was quoted in an MSNBC story! This, by the way, was when I first realized the news was bunk. I mean, they quoted me? I was hammered, angry, and (apparently) had a cold. I was listening to a bootleg album in my decrepit apartment in Washington Heights, and I spouted off a little.
Troubling questions: 1) Why did "the news" need to cover the bootleg album? 2) Did they not realize this was just an op-ed piece? 3) MSNBC had to go to the frakkin' VIllage Broadsheet for their scoops?!
--A piece called "Elvis Was a Racist," about how Elvis wasn't a racist! Despite some youthful liberties in argumentation, I'm actually proud of this one. Oh, and if you don't like reading my name next to something I've written, you can hop over to the Elvis Information Network, where they've attributed my article to someone named Sanja Meegin and put a question mark in the title!
After my SPAM-related identity crisis yesterday, reading my words -- words written when I was so pointlessly and self-pityingly drunk, angry, and sad -- attributed to someone else made me feel strangely free. I only wish the Elvis Information Network or some other anonymous blogger had taken away the rants about ex-girlfriends, the rants about leaving New York, the a-historical liberalism, or the smarmy hagiographies for washed-up old pop singers instead.
We had a lot of fun with this site. It made us feel special, we wrote some middlingly good stuff, and I'm sure it would've improved with time. It's sad to re-live the decline of the Broadsheet: from fledgling e-zine to "blog" (remember when that word was new and shiny?), from blog to infrequently updated ghost town full of fancy promises of a bi-coastal edition, and finally...
Beep.
Beep.
Bip...
Boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooop.
At least now I know where to find a Greek villa if I need one. |
